This presentation focuses on the emergence of Brazil as a key node in a new poly-centric global cartography of the sacred that is challenging traditional understandings of the public place of religion in late modernity. Brazil has now become a major pole of religious innovation and production, exporting globally not only dynamic indigenized forms of Pentecostalism and Charismatic Catholicism, but also African-based religions such as Candomblé and Umbanda, as well as diverse expressions of New Age Spiritism and Ayahuasca-centered neo-shamanism like Vale do Amanhecer and Santo Daime. I will discuss the multi-scalar actors, networks, flows, media, and strategies that have made possible the rise of Brazil as a “potência religiosa mundial” [religious world power], in the words of sociologist José Casanova, drawing theoretical and methodological implications for the study of religion in motion.
